


the sunshine threw his hat away

by pfaerie



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Hand Jobs, M/M, Making Out, Thunderstorms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-16
Updated: 2019-03-16
Packaged: 2019-11-18 19:11:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18125315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pfaerie/pseuds/pfaerie
Summary: Maybe it’s a little funny how much the wild likes to torment this one enthusiast in particular.





	the sunshine threw his hat away

**Author's Note:**

> It's been a while! This is something of a writing exercise as I recently played the game and fell for Mr. Mason. Title from Dickinson's "A Drop fell on the Apple Tree -"

It's not funny.

That's what Arthur tells himself to keep from laughing at Mason, who looks about as happy as a drowned cat and is gasping like a fish out of water.

 _City lungs_ , Arthur thinks when Mason doubles over and coughs. “You alright?” he asks, clapping Mason on the back a few times when those coughs go on too long.

Mason holds up a finger, tries to get some words out, wheezes a few more times, and coughs again. “I,” he starts. “I'm fine, thanks to you, of course.”

“Are you?”

“Asthma,” Mason finally supplies, looking sheepish. “A childhood thing that I only mostly grew out of. I’m fine, _really_.”

Skeptically, Arthur says, “If you say so. He takes his hand back and gets to work wringing out his shirtsleeves.

“Surely, I would have been swallowed up by that torrential downpour if you hadn’t come along, Mister Morgan.”

It’s not funny, Arthur tells himself again, ducking his head to hide the smile, but a raspy chuckle stutters his words when he says, “I think you sorta were.”

Hilariously, Mason looks down at himself, spreading his arms wide to inspect just how thoroughly the five-minute trek to the abandoned barn drenched him. Drops of water disappear into the dehydrated ground as fast as the fall. His light blue shirt is translucent where it’s not bunched up. “Yes, well. I suppose you’re right about that one.”

Part of it, Arthur thinks, is the situation. Of course Mason would get swallowed up by a storm in a place that hasn’t had a good rain in weeks. Of course he’d scramble like a chicken to get the less weather resistant camera equipment into the semi-waterproof safety of his bag. And of course Mason would trip over every slick stone up the hill he possibly could, just to tempt fate.

Maybe it’s a little funny how much the wild likes to torment this one enthusiast in particular.

Mason laughs, a nervous tittering that makes another terrible chuckle bubble up in Arthur's chest. Before he can get out a self-depreciative joke, or worse, another onslaught of thank-yous and reassurances that Mister Morgan is, in fact, a gentleman, Arthur says, too direct and stilted to be casual, “I saw your pictures. At that gallery in Saint Denis.”

“Oh?” Mason feigns nonchalance, tries to at least, but soaked-through boathats don’t demand nearly as much attention as he gives the woven straw. “You had time to…what did you think?”

It was happenstance. Arthur wasn’t at the gallery to look at Albert Mason's prints, though he wasn’t there to get in a brawl on Charles Châtenay’s behalf either. Purely accidental. It’s fitting, given all of their encounters start by stumbling gracelessly over one another.

“They was nice. Real nice stuff, Mister Mason.”

A little swell of pride puffs out Mason’s chest, but he immediately deflates and waves Arthur off dismissively. “Lucky shots, only made possible through your intervention.”

“All I did was make sure you could take more than one,” Arthur rebuffs. “Shame you wasted one on my ugly mug.”

Wolves and gators aren’t the worst company Arthur could keep, he supposes -- Lord knows he’s just as mean as the wild animals; worse, he’d argue, on his bad days. Still, seeing his own portrait hung up in Galerie Laurent was an experience to say the least, one that made Arthur’s stomach twist in ways it hasn’t in a long time. Though, any embarrassment he felt in the moment was quickly overshadowed by the fact other people had portraits on display too, portraits far more naked than his own.

“Wasted,” Mason repeats, eyebrows knitting wrinkles into his forehead. More indignantly, he says, “ _Wasted?_ ” and looks at Arthur, in disbelief or something close to it.

Arthur wants to laugh all over again because he hasn’t seen Mason look half as scandalized as he does now, not even when Arthur tried to get a rise out of him. His skin itches under the scrutiny, but he resists the urge to squirm.

“Mister Morgan, none of my shots were wasted, least of all on you.” His words are deliberately slow, eyes glittering with a sincere admiration so naive that Arthur feels the urge to hit him. His hat winds up back on his head, lopsided. “My goal is to capture the beauty of the untamed wild, which I think I did, in my own fumbling way.”

The itch becomes a more painful prickle, a creeping embarrassment that sets the hairs on Arthur’s arms and neck on end and makes his stomach do somersaults. He flexes his fingers to keep them from curling into white-knuckled fists and chews on the inside of his cheek. He doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t have words prepared for such brutal honesty.

“You in the business of conserving cowboys now, Mister Mason?”

“Mister Morgan, I have been robbed by coyotes, nearly eaten by wolves, and chased by alligators! If anything, you are in the business of conserving foolish wildlife photographers.”

He hasn’t met any other wildlife photographers, but he has met other tourists. The kind of morons who show up in clean suits and fancy dresses and cry when a little mud gets on their frilly lace frock, as if they expected carpets to be rolled out especially for them. They always make such a spectacle of themselves, brandishing fat wallets at the unwashed masses, offering a dime for their dignity. Arthur doesn’t feel so bad about robbing those folk.

Albert Mason may be foolish, but he ain’t a moron.

“Just the one,” Arthur admits. “He’s got a real tendency of riling up the locals.”

“Don’t know why you bother.” He looks around then, like what he wants to say is floating just inches from his face, waiting for him to snatch it out of the air. “My project would have, quite literally, been incomplete without you, Mister Morgan. Including that picture of you May have been...a saccharine way of honoring that, but it felt right regardless.”

Arthur’s voice threatens to stick to the walls of his throat, so he clears it before saying, “Come on now. I ain’t so different from anybody else.”

Mason honest to God rolls his eyes, looks frustrated even -- a mood with which Arthur is familiar enough with that he feels less embarrassed -- when he says, “But you are! Most people would have left me to become some creature’s meal. Decent ones even -- did you know my agency back in New York has a betting pool on my survival? If I had been eaten by bears two weeks ago, Andrew Perkins in accounting would have made ten dollars!”

The bit of Arthur that wants to say _fuck that guy_ is silenced by a growl of thunder shakes the building, wind pulling groans out of the deteriorating wood. Mason looks up, holding himself, and shivers.

“This structure is sound, right?”

“Don’t tell me the storm’s got you spooked.”

“Not the storm, no. I just think going out via building collapse would be a rather anticlimactic end, given the options.”

“I wouldn’t let you _die_ ,” Arthur snorts. “A little maimed, maybe. You could do with a few scars, all that near-death you get yourself up to.”

Mason shakes his head. “I wouldn’t pull them off nearly as well as you, Mister Morgan.”

Reflexively, Arthur scrubs his chin, fingers tracing over the bare patch of his beard, and clears his throat. He swears Mason actually _smirks._ “Are you going back then? To New York?”

“Eventually, I suppose.”

And Arthur must look sad, well _sadder_ than he usually does, because there's a change in Mason then, like he's nearly figured out a puzzle. Slowly, he takes a step forward, like he’s trying not to scare off a skittish deer, and then another and Arthur doesn't have the good sense to retreat. The faint smell of flash powder tickles his nose. Lightning flashes brightly through the holes in the roof. Electricity pulses at the base of Arthur's spine, sends his blood thundering in his ears so loud he can’t hear the rain pounding on the roof.

“I’m not going anywhere _now_ , however,” Mason says, voice dripping with implication.

“Not until the storm lets up,” Arthur agrees, so soft he's sure Mason hadn't heard him.

If he weren't so out of practice, Arthur might make the first move, take charge and kiss Mason until their mouths stung with bruises and their lungs ached for air - really show Mason something wild.

But instead, Mason cradles him like he's precious, kisses him with butterfly softness that nobody’s ever kissed Arthur with in his life. Sticky blooms of warmth crawl through his veins like molasses, and Arthur thinks maybe, for once, he can be sweet or something close to it. He lets Mason kiss him, open-mouthed and unhurried, storm rattling the building around them. Splintering wood bites through his shirt in a way not wholly unpleasant when Mason gently leans him against the wall, just as Arthur’s knees turn to jelly.

Buttons come undone, suspenders hang loose, hats fall to the ground, and a warm hand splays on Arthur’s bare chest, right over his thundering heart. His stomach twists into knots when Mason pulls away to look. Bitten-down fingernails drag through the hair, following the trail lower and lower as it narrows until a finger lands on the buckle of the gunbelt.

The questions of _what comes next_ and _how far does this go_ hangs between them, but Arthur doesn’t think he could handle Mason actually saying it, so he surges forward and kisses him again, with significantly more teeth than the first go-round. Mason’s hand moves from the buckle to his hip, and the heat of his palms seeping through the denim of Arthur’s damp jeans is only marginally less dizzying.

With a twinge of embarrassment, Arthur realizes his hands have done little more than rest on Mason's shoulders since they started. Not for lack of want or any sort of hesitation or anything -- Mason is very touchable, practically begs for it without words. He's sure that despite the wiry frame and bony elbows, Mason is soft all over.

Arthur definitely wants to touch him.

Thumbs trace the sharp line of collarbones, follow the sternum when hands drop to Mason’s chest. Even the hair there is soft, Arthur notes, and he’s so warm, burning hot despite the rain-cool clothes sticking to their skin. Arthur fists his hands into Mason’s shirt and pulls him in close, so that they’re flush up against one another, bare skin touching where their shirts hang open.

 _“Christ,”_ Arthur huffs.

The vibrations that go through him when Mason answers with an inquisitive hum travel straight to his dick, and he’s sure Mason knows exactly what he’s doing to him too because he pushes a warm thigh between Arthur’s legs. Like sugar in the rain, Arthur’s brain melts and something deep in his gut pulses more heat through him. He thinks he hears thunder, but the only thing his ears are willing to register is his own panting.

Mason touches him again, pulling away just enough for his hands to glide over scars and bruises and new wounds -- Arthur isn't so foolish as to think the photographer is taking any real note of them, but he relishes in the caress of long, curious fingers while he can have them. Confident fingers make quick work of his belt.

“Careful with that,” Arthur grumbles before Mason gets the chance to drop it.

And God damn him, Mason _laughs_ , a breathy little chuckle before he makes a show of carefully setting Arthur’s guns down. His fly is finally, blessedly, _enthusiastically,_ undone, followed by a warm hand dipping into his jeans. Arthur’s not so dramatic that he thinks he’d die if this stopped right now; he’s more strong-minded than that, and he knows exactly what near-death feels like. This, with Mason right now, is soft and electrifying and so much better than near-death, especially when Mason’s fingers squeeze around the length of him.

The jeans cling too tightly for it to be entirely comfortable, so Arthur wrestles his jeans down his thighs and does the same for Mason, who takes both their dicks in one hand and strokes. Arthur tips his head back against the wall, breath coming in ragged puffs. Teeth drag across the sensitive skin of his throat, riding the line of too painful and not painful enough. Arthur teeters on the edge, tips over it when those teeth sink into the juncture of his his neck and shoulder.

***

Afternoon sun leaks through the roof, and the rain has slowed to more of a trickle, light enough that the songbirds have come back out to finish out the day. Arthur takes a long drag off his cigarette, watching the bits of sky he can see race with wispy clouds. His right arm, the one Mason is currently using as a pillow, is starting to fall asleep, but he doesn’t mind.

“Do you think,” Mason starts, inspecting his camera. Something in it rattles, but Mason seems more concerned with finding any water damage. “That ‘cowboy’ was in the pool of things that would eat me?”

And it’s not funny, but Arthur still laughs.


End file.
